


the journey of a thousand miles

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: A bit of fluff if you squint your eyes enough, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trope: arranged marriage (sort of), Trope: class divide (sort of), Trope: confessions under dangerous peril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 18:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: during an escapade throughout a new facility, the pod squad and the human squad end up ambushed. where michael has a tough decision to make and alex needs to keep his cool.





	the journey of a thousand miles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estel_willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/gifts).

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANNAH! I hope you're having a wonderful wonderful day!
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this just as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. 
> 
> Beta'ed by [InsidiousIntent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsidiousIntent/profile), without whom this would have been completely unreadable.

“Watch your six!” Alex yells as he rolls on the floor, covering himself with a turned table. Max is trying to protect Liz and Isobel, shoving them behind the wood as though it could save them from the bullets currently coming their way. Cam shoots her firearm twice, aiming for the hinges of the door in the hopes that she manages to scare whoever is attacking them, or at least keep them off their backs long enough for them to think of an alternative plan to escape, before she ducks and flops down besides Kyle.

When Alex secures his position, years of training and war running through his veins, he notices Michael is nowhere to be seen.

“Has anyone seen Guerin?” he asks, but his words are drowned by the sound of shooting over their heads. He dares a look around the edge of the table to see the outline of bullets bulging the metal of the fallen door. He knows it will not hold much longer. “Where the hell is Guerin?”

“Wasn’t he with you?” Kyle asks over the noise. The door collapses under its own weight, no longer holding up from its hinges thanks to Cam, and there’s a moment of silence.

“Are we safe?” Isobel asks as the noise stops. They all can see shadows cast beneath the door, on the other side, in the hall. “Where’s Michael?”

“What do you mean, where's Michael?” Max questions as he sits up, back against the table. “He was supposed to be right behind us!”

Alex feels himself despairing. If something happens to Michael, he’s not going to forgive himself – after all, this is all Alex’s doing, finding this goddamn place in the middle of the desert in Colorado during one of his readings throughout Project Shepherd’s documents from Caulfield, roping everyone into a plan to assault it and free whoever was being held captive inside, Kyle in tow because of some righteous feeling about dismantling how own legacy. Max and Isobel had wanted to help, and they had brought Liz and Cam with them; Maria had offered her help as driver since she had wanted to be involved but she hadn't thought she'd be cut to infiltrate inside the building. Michael had simply said that he’d be the one exploding heads if things became too harsh on them.

Alex worries about Michael when he’s not in direct danger of being killed. Right now, his anxiety is peaking, and Michael is nowhere to be seen, when he should have been following them.

“When has your brother been able to follow simple instructions?” Cam sneers.

“Can you two please stop it?” Liz interrupts, frowning at both Max and Cam. “If Michael’s not here, he could be in danger. _Real_ danger.”

Their conversation is cut by strangled noises coming from outside the door; they all can see a shadow moving fast, and then the noises die as suddenly as they started. Alex motions for Liz, Isobel and Kyle to move further into the room in an attempt to protect them from whatever peril that might be trying to enter the room where they have foolishly locked themselves into.

The heap of metal and glass begins to tremble as though someone is trying to move it; Alex readies his gun, feeling more than seeing how Max and Cam mimic his stance. They can’t risk their position, and they aren’t going to surrender without a fight. 

The door wobbles, pulled backwards by an invisible force; it’s lifted and cracked, and among the debris that fall to the already filthy floor Alex can see the unmistakable silhouette of Michael Guerin.

Isobel beats him to hug Michael, though.

She runs past everyone like a blonde exhalation, and throws herself into Michael’s arms. “Where were you? I thought they’d caught you!” she accuses him, patting his arm affectionately.

“Right behind you, Iz,” Michael replies, looking straight into Alex’s eyes over Isobel’s hair. 

“Are they-” Max asks as they all step tentatively out of the room. Alex follows him; he has to suppress a shudder as he takes in the scene unfolding before his eyes – seven built men are lying on the floor, unconscious. Alex really hopes they aren't dead, because he wouldn’t stand the idea of Michael becoming a murderer, not when he's the only one of the three aliens present that has _never_ taken a life. 

“Just unconscious,” Michael shrugs. “Let’s run before they wake up and keep shooting us.”

Isobel and Liz are the first ones to follow Cam as she opens the race, gun held in place before her body. Kyle shakes his head but follows them, Michael and Alex hot on their heels, as Max closes off the formation of sorts they’ve managed to create in the span of a few seconds. They only make it halfway through the corridors when they hear footsteps following them. Alex turns his head to catch Max's glance urging him to keep marching towards the exit, where Maria is waiting for them in a van with the engine running. 

Behind Max's back, Alex can see the distinctive uniforms of Project Shepherd's minions turning around a corner. 

They keep running and running until they hit a blind exit, a wall cutting their path. There are a few doors at both left and right when Alex makes a quick scan of their surroundings. The footsteps approach, they have to decide soon their next course of action before they are trapped with no escape. 

"If we enter any of the rooms, we'll be doomed," Kyle whispers when Max and Cam begin tugging at the closest door's knob. 

"Got any better ideas, Valenti?" Cam hisses, her efforts to open the door immediately successful. The metallic sound of hinges cringing gives them away though, so they rush inside and close the door once again, engulfed by darkness. He notices, belatedly, that Liz is limping, helping herself on Isobel until she can lean against one of the furthest walls. 

Alex realizes their mistake the moment the door flies open once again and a voice he knows so well speaks, barely three minutes after they have managed to catch their breaths. "Good job, little brother," Flint says, lights flaming above their heads. "You've managed to bring the three freaks to us." 

"Flint," he greets his brother by raising his gun and aiming it square to his chest. "What a surprise." 

He can feel Max and Cam positioning in front of the others, their only armed chance to defend themselves from the army gathering behind Flint. Alex counts up to six men, and he hopes Isobel is strong enough to persuade at least half of them into leaving before Michael blows them around the room. 

"Surrender the monsters, and I'll think about allowing you to live," Flint keeps going, unfazed by the threat of three guns pointed his way. 

"I can only see one monster, and he is in front of me," he retaliates, not giving in, arm stretched in front of him. 

"I see you've already chosen sides," Flint smirks. "You were always the weakest of us all." 

It all happens so fast Alex doesn't have time to actually register everything that explodes around him. All of a sudden, half of the men are charging against them, Isobel yelping at his back, and if Alex could look at her he would see blood trailing down her nose as a result of her fruitless effort.

He fights them off easily, being much better trained than them, rendering them unconscious and unarmed while he wonders why Isobel has failed to convince them to flee. There's no reason for that to have happened, and yet she’s not been successful. 

Some of the remaining military minions crowd behind Flint, but it's easy to discharge his gun in their general direction; Alex doesn’t know who he's got among the chaos that's Max and Cam and Flint and himself shooting – them aiming to kill, Flint looking for defence. 

Alex's firearm makes a clicking sound and it stops working. Disarmed, he glances up at Flint who's taking advantage of the ruckus to make an attempt to approach him. Alex feels fear flaring inside of him as he watches around himself for some leverage. Isobel and Liz are hiding behind some shelves, Kyle is fighting his way through a couple of too young kids playing god, and his gaze falls on the yellow walls. 

_Yellow_. 

"It's a shame," Flint is saying over the ringing in Alex’s ears. "So much talent gone to waste." He aims his gun, wets his lips, and shoots. Alex is helpless against the bullet. He waits for an impact that never comes. 

Michael shoves him out of the way and absorbs the sound and the motion of something that wasn't intended for him, as Max discharges his gun and burns three holes in Flint's chest. 

Michael drops to the ground with a resounding crack. 

Alex doesn’t even give a second glance as Flint falls to the ground. He’s too busy skidding to the spot where Michael lies, half prodded on his right side in an awkward angle. “Hey,” he says softly, one hand already on Michael’s curls, turning his head slightly as Max crouches by their side and helps him position Michael on his back on the floor. “Michael,” he calls him.

Hazel eyes flutter open. Michael’s breath is ragged but he manages a small smirk. “Private,” he coughs.

Max is applying enough pressure on Michael’s stomach that Alex has the feeling that the hand holding over the wound could go through Michael’s flesh easily. Blood is flooding out of the open injury. Alex tries not to freak out; it wouldn’t help matters, and if he’s hearing right Isobel’s already on the verge of losing it, holding it together by a thread if the bitten back sounds she’s making are any indication. He has witnessed so many war injuries, and this one isn’t worse than many of the wounds he’s had to tend to in the desert.

The only difference is that, this time, it is no soldier in the field with training and experience and _desire_ to fight. This time, it’s Michael Guerin. This time, it’s as though he’s getting his heart ripped in two.

He can’t lose Michael.

“Can’t you heal him, Max?” Alex pleads in a whisper, eyes leaving Michael’s face for a brief moment, enough for the cowboy to sigh and sag against his touch. He looks back to him after Max has shaken his head in a defeated movement.

“Not here,” Max mumbles, lifting Michael until he’s resting against Max’s chest. “We have to get him out of here, but I don’t know-”

“If we move him,” Liz intervenes for the first time. Alex doesn’t dare to look up; he can hear the same despair he’s feeling in his friend’s voice. “Alex, I don’t know if he could make it.”

“He has to,” Alex replies stubbornly. “This fucking room is built in the powder that makes _them_ as powerless as us! We have to try, we have to-”

“Breathe, Alex,” Kyle steps up, placing a hand on his shoulder. He leans to check on the injury, blood overflowing as Michael keeps coughing. "If we want to help him, we have to move him now. Take him somewhere safe, without powder. It's his only chance." 

"Michael, open your eyes," Alex whispers, forehead almost touching Michael's. "We need you to be awake." 

"Has to be-grave," Michael drawls in between coughing fits. "You never-always-Guerin." 

"You'll be okay," Alex promises although he doesn’t really know if that's the case. "Max, please." 

"I can't carry him and protect you all," Max says.

"Just until we reach the room where we were before," Alex pleads. "Michael could reduce the guards there." 

"Let's move," Valenti intervenes, placing his arms under Michael's frame and pushing him up slowly. 

"I would only delay you," Liz quips, gesturing to her ankle. "I think I sprained it." 

Alex lets out a complaining sound, a cross between a groan and a sob. At this pace, Michael will bleed out on this filthy floor and he wouldn’t be able to save the only man he's ever loved. He barely registers the movement surrounding him, but when he finally lifts his eyes from Michael's face, he sees as Kyle seems to be having a silent conversation with Cam. After what feels like a couple of millennia, Cam nods and steps forward, kissing Kyle hard as she grips the lapels of his jacket, now covered in Michael’s blood. 

Alex would have been more surprised if he didn’t have to keep Michael from dying surrounded by incapacitating yellow when they have an alien savior in their ranks. 

"Go ahead," Cam instructs. "I will cover Isobel and Liz as we follow you. Just try to remain alive." 

"Love you too, honey," Kyle jokes as he motions for Alex to help him lift Michael. Alex obliges, and he follows Max out of the room. 

"I wasn't expecting that," Max grunts as he leads the way over the bodies of the military men fallen in the battle. 

"I don't have to discuss my life with anyone," Kyle retorts, panting under the weight they're both carrying. "But yeah, it kinda took me by surprise as well." 

They find another room that's not lined up in yellow powder easily enough, since Max can feel the surge of his powers rushing back as they approach the door. After a quick check that the surroundings are clear, they enter the room and place Michael on the floor. There's no time to waste; Max kneels by his side and puts a red glowing hand on Michael’s wound. The whole patch of skin reflects the lightning, pearls of sweat beading his forehead. When he's done, he slumps a side pale and shivering; Alex spares him a quick glance to make sure he isn’t fainting after his first attempt at healing since coming back. 

Alex doesn’t let go of Michael’s hand, not even when Max rolls on his side and Kyle takes over to certify that Michael is safe. "Okay, buddy," Kyle says softly, shaking Michael. "Open your eyes." 

Michael doesn't budge. 

"Has it worked?" they hear Isobel asking, the girls having found them even with an injured Liz, who's now supporting her weight on Cam. 

"Michael, open your eyes," and Alex thinks he's sounding like a broken record. "Michael," he half sobs, grabbing the front of the shirt in painfully desperate fists. "Please." 

But Michael's hazel eyes remain closed, just like a couple of minutes before, where he muttered something about being too tired and he shut them.

Alex can't feel anything but a void in his soul.

> His mother is standing tall in front of him, staring down as he approaches her warily. Michael doesn’t recognize his surroundings, a haze of places and moments flying by him. He takes a step forward on uneven ground, the feeling so similar to walking on oil that Michael thinks he could get his feet stuck on the surface he's skidding over. When he glances down, he notices that there is ground beneath his feet, just a void where a floor should have been. 
> 
> He is walking on thin air. 
> 
> "My son," he hears in his mind. The voice that haunts the corners of his mind every night, the last words he heard from the mother he never got to know.. "Son, come by my side." 
> 
> Mara is beautiful. Michael thinks he shouldn’t be calling his mother by her given name, the one she told him about during their brief last moments, but this is his mind playing tricks on him so he follows the logic of his dream. He swallows hard, taking in the long blonde locks and the blue eyes that seem to read him with just a glance. Michael doesn’t believe that he's inherited any of her most striking looks, but he's been daydreaming about those eyes locking on his, about finding out they share the same light in their irises. 
> 
> "Where are we?" he asks when he's by her side. Mara is wearing a long, blinding white dress, straps hugging her shoulders as she leans in to caress his cheek. "Why am I here?" 
> 
> "You know why," Mara whispers, her voice barely audible over Michael's fast heartbeats. 
> 
> "Am I dead?" He’s afraid to ask, but he does anyway. He watched as Caulfield flew up to the sky in flames; there's no chance that anyone who'd been inside when the timer ran down, survived. 
> 
> "Not yet," she replies mysteriously, her hand never leaving his skin, burning fingertips against his weirdly cool face. 
> 
> "Where are we?" he questions again since his mother hasn't answered that particular query before. "If I'm not dead. Yet." There's a shudder fighting its way up his spine but he suppresses it the best he can. 
> 
> "I think you know where we are," she smiles sadly at him. The image shifts and they are no longer standing on air. There's a room around them, a desk and a window but no landscape he can spy on. It reminds Michael eerily of the magic movies Isobel forced them to watch when they were younger. "Why do you think you're here, my son?" 
> 
> Michael frowns. "You said I am dying. I don't remember dying _again_," he says slowly. He remembers dying that first time, the stab in his neck and Noah's vicious words echoing in his mind before everything turned to dark, before Max and his neverending need to be a fairytale hero. "This isn't like last time." 
> 
> "Do you tend to die a lot, son?" Mara sounds amused, albeit a bit worried, if the frown matching his is sending Michael the right signals. 
> 
> "Only when necessary," he jokes. “Last I remember, we were in this building and-” he trails off, eyes wide in surprise and recollection. He remembers now, and the pain he feels on a daily basis dials up from a dull lullaby in the back of his head to a full shriek in the front of his mind. “No. It can’t be-”
> 
> “My son,” Mara says, capturing his face in her small, tender hands, forcing him to still and look at her. “You’re okay, here. This is whatever you want it to be.”
> 
> Michael shakes his head, but Mara keeps talking. "You get to choose, my son. You get to decide where you want to be." 
> 
> “I don’t want to come back,” he hiccups, suddenly short of breath and on the verge of tears, after a second that feels like a lifetime. “I don’t want to be here either, but you’re here and I just-I think they all will be better off without me.” His fears go unvoiced, the pain of never being enough, of always falling short, of standing on the wrong leg of reality. 
> 
> “You deserve to be loved,” Mara says. Michael just stares at her fathomless eyes. “I know you think you don’t. I know you think you’re not loved. But you forget I was there that day. I was feeling what you were feeling. I was feeling what _he_ was feeling.” She stops briefly, allowing him time for her words to sink in. 
> 
> “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Michael can be really stubborn, and his mother’s eyes are telling him that she thinks he’s also dumb.
> 
> “Son, I love you. Your older brother and sister love you. _He_ loves you, even after everything you two have been through. You’re meant to be,” she sighs. “It’s written in the stars. Love like yours is cosmic.” Michael blinks, unable to form a coherent thought at his mother’s words.
> 
> “If we were meant to be, we would already _be_,” he protests faintly, ready to fight whoever tells him that the years spent walking away and drowning sorrows in acetone and alcohol don’t count as being apart.
> 
> Mara simply smiles softly, her eyes squinting. “You already are,” she dares to say. She lifts one finger to cut Michael when he opens his mouth to retaliate. “You’ve been for so long, in so many different lives. You’ve been together for eons, fighting side by side, falling together over and over again, only to rise up again, _together_."
> 
> Michael frowns at her words. “Fighting? Listen, I’d buy whatever you say about Alex being a fighter, but you know, I’m the kind of guy to hit and run.” He doesn’t voice his self-deprecating belief about how he isn’t fighting material, just a punching ball for patrons at the Pony to spar with. “Alex is brave, he’s a fighter. I’m just your average alien, I guess.”
> 
> “You are braver than you believe, son,” Mara states. Her white dress is changing colors as the room they’re in shifts once again, leaving Michael dizzy. “You are stronger than you seem.”
> 
> “I am neither of those things, but if you say so.”
> 
> The room stops spinning and Michael finds himself in a library of sorts, endless shelves loaded with books seem to stretch into infinity. There’s one, however, sprawled open in the middle of the room, held up by sheer invisible powers. Michael blinks, and the book simply turns a couple of pages, words mingling together in sentences he can’t read yet. “What’s this place?”
> 
> “You also are smarter than you think,” Mara sentences with a sigh. “Where do you think we are?”
> 
> Michael doesn’t reply right away, cataloguing everything he’s seeing and filing it under different mental folders he can see fly around in his mind. The book in the middle of the space chants at him, a siren’s call he can’t really fight. “A library?” he asks stupidly.
> 
> “Yes, we are in a library," his mother sighs. "All your lives, past, present and future are here." 
> 
> Michael shakes his head. "What are you talking about?" 
> 
> But his mother only motions for him to approach the book in the middle of the room while she sits back on a chair that has shown up out of nowhere. "All your answers are there."
> 
> Michael takes a few tentative steps in the general direction of the book, only for it to be set into motion; it flies his way, eliciting a yelp from him. Once he's recovered, he allows his palm to be pressed against the cracked surface, centuries present in each line. The words he's spied before turned into images – he watches as the page morphs into a scene, his curls peeking from underneath a crown as Alex kneels by his side. "What the fuck?" 
> 
> "Oh, I see," Mara laughs softly. "That seems to be the time when your father forced you to marry the son of his most valued human warrior as a token of goodwill. You refused quite colorfully, if I recall correctly."
> 
> Michael shakes his head in disbelief. There's something utterly appealing in the way Alex bows forward, one astray lock in his longish hair falling and catching in his nose. He wants to reach out to the image – the _memory_ – and tuck the offending hair back where it belongs. "What do you mean, forced me?" he asks. His fingers glaze over the page. 
> 
> "You have always been our third son," Mara explains quietly. "Your father needed an alliance with Earth." 
> 
> "In our culture we offer people as tokens?" If that's the case, Michael doesn't want to belong to that kind of society. He’s seen the worst of the human side, he doesn’t think he'd survive the worst of his own kind. 
> 
> "This was a life so many centuries ago. You see," Maria licks her lips. "You escaped. The night before the bonding ceremony, you took a ship and fled to Earth. It took us months to find you, and by then, you had found your soulmate." 
> 
> A rush of images assaults him all of a sudden. There's a street full of people around stalls at a flea market. There's someone stealing bread to feed children. There's a guard and there's a chase. He is running through the packed streets, not really understanding what's going on, until he feels his legs giving out and he collapses against a warm body. 
> 
> Michael would have recognized those eyes anywhere. 
> 
> "It's always been the two of you," Mara's voice takes him out of his reverie. "In that life, you met him while you were trying to pass by as a peasant. It was a real surprise when your father found you and dragged you back to Antar to get married.”
> 
> Michael is focused on the following page, too engrossed in the scene unfolding to hear his mother’s words. They take a while to register, and when they filter through his mind he looks up, dazed and confused. “What? Why was it a surprise?”
> 
> “Because you fought your father back for someone you were already betrothed to,” Mara replies brightly. “You went and fall for the youngest of Sergeant Jesse Manes’ sons, the one who was your intended. You were meant to be together, even if you didn’t know that at first.”
> 
> Michael just blinks, no longer interested in the story of arranged marriages and royals fleeing castles. He’s watching as a version of himself in designer jeans and a white shirt enters a coffee shop and gets served by a version of Alex in an apron, wearing a name tag. They’re both smiling shyly, hopefully, _lovingly_, at each other. “Is it like this all the time?” he asks, interrupting Mara’s words.
> 
> “Like what? The two of you?” Mara snorts warmly. “Son, you’re not always Michael and Alex. Neither of you have always been men. But surely, it’s been the two of you against the world for eons now, and you will be again, if you are brave enough to take the chance.”
> 
> “Has there been any lives where neither of us took the chance?” He dreads the answer, but he speaks up anyway.
> 
> “Of course, but those are the only unhappy endings.”
> 
> Michael stills next to the book, the room fading away once again until both of them are standing in the middle of the darkness. “Maybe this is one of those lives,” he whispers.
> 
> Mara shakes her head, chuckling softly. “If it were, son, you and I wouldn’t be here. This is just a temporary passage, a limbo. Here you get to decide.”
> 
> “Decide what?”
> 
> “Decide whether it’s worth coming back or you’d rather move forward to your next life,” Mara explains. “So, my son, what will it be?”
> 
> Michael realizes his mother has never called him by his given name; he wonders if that’s because he’s been so many different people throughout different lives, always being her son. It’s strange that he doesn’t find it more difficult to believe that he’s in an endless loop of lives than he does thinking Alex might want him in every single one of them. “So, uhm,” he clears his throat. “What should I do to, uhm, decide?”
> 
> “You have to think about what you want to do. The longer it takes you, the longer you’ll stay here.”
> 
> “That’s why you’re still here, then,” he states rather than questions. Mara just stares back at him, her white dress blinding him somewhat. “If I decided to come back, if I-I just took off, how should I go about, you know, making this one a happy ending?”
> 
> Mara shares a smile of a thousands watts with him. “You wouldn’t have any idea, son. It’s normal. You started off this life with fewer chances than most.”
> 
> Michael rubs a hand on his face. He has to make a decision, but he’s not sure if Alex is going to accept him after everything – after this particular scare, because if he knows Alex enough, Michael’s sure Alex doesn’t like to be saved. “But how do I go about that? It’s not like anything I have tried before has ever worked. I’m always fucking things up, or he’s leaving, or there’s some massive government conspiracy going on or-”
> 
> “Just be yourself, son,” Mara tells him, placing her hand on his arm and squeezing. “Everyone else is already taken. I’ll see you in the next life, son,” she continues, stepping away and starting to fade out. Before he can say anything else, Mara vanishes into thin air.

"Wake up," Isobel is pleading. She’s kneeling besides Michael, one hand threading through his curls, the other hitting him square in the chest with less force than intention. Alex has stood up, his leg giving him a hard time, but he mostly wants an excuse not to look into Michael’s peaceful face, as though he’s sleeping when Alex knows the truth.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Cam asks, one eye on the door and the other on the group gathered around Michael. She’s holding her gun once again, always ready for a crossfire. “Hasn’t your magic worked, Evans?”

“There’s no handprint, why is there no handprint?” Kyle notices, pointing at Michael’s bare chest from his position hovering above both him and Isobel, who’s pushed Kyle out of the way to remain besides her brother. Max is still propped against the nearest wall, white and trembling. “I don’t know if that’s how it works with you.”

“There wasn’t a handprint on me either,” Isobel reminds them all. “From when-from before Noah,” she clears her throat. “And there wasn’t any on Michael after-after everything.”

“I don’t think handprints are the way we show healing,” Max mutters. Alex isn’t looking at them, too engrossed in the cracks on the wall he’s currently staring at, but he’s sure Max is trying to get up from the rustle he can hear. “Let me try again.”

“No way, Evans,” Kyle bans him from it, authority present in his voice. “You’re too weak.”

“I guess we could try and take him outside?” Liz suggests. Alex turns to stare at her. She shrugs apologetically at him. “Maybe we can find some answers as to why he isn’t waking up. Kyle says he’s breathing and his heart rate is normal, so maybe he’s in... Of course!” she exclaims, as if it’s evident what her train of thought is. “We need to get him out of this hell,” she keeps going, excited, hands moving in front of her. “He’s in stasis! Can’t you see? He’s trying to heal _himself_! We have to get him to a pod right away!”

So maybe she’s right, Alex has to concede. Liz is one of the most intelligent people in the room, the other being Michael himself; they should all give it a try. He says as much, adding wearily, “after all, what’s left for us here? If you’re right, and we keep wasting time here, Michael might not make it back.”

Everyone nods eagerly, even if Max is still too wobbly to actually take a couple of steps without stumbling. Alex recounts their options – with one of their shooters down, their bioengineer limping, the telekinetic boy wonder in what looks like a coma, they have little expectation for success. He sighs. “Let’s do this,” he starts, planning as he talks. “Isobel, you’re helping Liz out. Don’t argue me on that, Ortecho, we need you whole for later. Cam, either you go first or I do. I don’t really care who.”

“I’ll go first,” she says brightly, cocking her gun. “So Isobel and Liz go second, then.”

“Kyle, you have to carry Michael,” Alex proposes. It’s not ideal – he wants to be the one holding Michael, making sure that he’s _fine_ – but Max can’t carry himself upright and Alex needs to be the one watching their backs. “Max, do you feel like you can walk?”

“I can even try running, Manes,” Max spits. It’s evident in his voice and his stance that he doesn’t like being told what to do, or what he surely shouldn’t be doing for that matter. “I can carry my own brother.”

“No, you can’t,” Kyle admonishes him. “It’s enough we have one drop in our ranks. We can’t afford you going down as well.”

“We’re doing this,” Alex confirms as Cam glances briefly outside the door. “Nobody stops, for _any_ reason. No matter what you hear or see, you just keep going. Our goal is to get both Michael and Liz out of this goddamn building in one piece.”

“And the rest of you?” Liz questions. She’s already draped around Isobel’s back, supporting her weight on her. 

“We’ll do fine,” Max reassures her. When he locks eyes with Alex, the soldier can see the fear in his gaze. Neither of them can be sure they’ll make it out, not after what they have just witnessed. Not after Flint having clocked them down. Not after Max having to take down Alex’s brother.

Not after having seen how Michael threw himself in the way of a bullet that his own brother had aimed at Alex.

There’s no more words exchanged, only grunts as Alex and Max help Kyle catch Michael. Cam retreats into the room for a hot second to drop a kiss on Kyle’s lips. Even if it’s the second time they’ve done it, it still catches Alex by surprise, and he files the questions he’s already formed in his mind for later teasing. “You’ll have to explain that to me,” Liz demands, grimacing through her pain as she sets on walking. Alex chuckles but nods. 

The trip back outside isn’t out of scary moments – at every turn they fear some military ambush would catch them off guard, in every corridor they lament the increasing number of glass doors and knobs that could turn into potential cells for them. They advance as quickly as they can, which is not much taking into account that they’re carrying a sprained ankle, an unconscious body, a drained out cop and a crippled airman. They don’t encounter anyone else; Alex doesn’t think for a minute that any Project Shepherd building could be holding so very few people guarding it, so maybe it was all part of a scam thrown in by his father to attract them – _him_ – and bring them down.

“There’s Maria!” Isobel screams, almost letting Liz drop down to the ground as they exit the last door from the building. Maria is waiting by the truck, kicking the dust with her boots and looking around with a bewildered light in her eyes. As soon as she notices them, she jumps into the cabin and starts the engine without even throwing them a second glance, as though she has seen the state of the group – the injured Liz, the unconscious Michael – and has decided there was no more time to waste.

“C’mon!” she yells through the open window when she’s made sure no one’s following them. “I don’t know what happened, but we need to move now!”

The group skids towards the truck as though walking in slow motion. Cam motions for them to approach the vehicle; Liz manages to get inside the passenger’s seat with a little help of Isobel, and Max waits for Kyle to get near the truck to help him place Michael in the back. Alex looks around them for a last moment before jumping alongside them as Cam and Isobel close the doors forcefully. He lifts the tailgate and hits the roof of the cabin with his open palm to let their driver know they’re good to go. 

“Michael,” Alex whispers leaning in, almost toppling over as the truck hits a bump in the road. “Please wake up. I know you’re in some kind of hibernation, but you’ve told me about how long it took for you to find a cure for Isobel, and I don’t think-I don’t think,” he trails off, sniffing. He doesn’t want to look around, because he knows he’s about to leave himself raw and in the open in front of Kyle and Max, but he can’t help the bubbling feeling of _loss_ whenever he thinks of Michael not waking up. “I can’t do this if you’re not waking up.” 

He doesn’t realize he’s clinging to Michael’s shirt until his fingers begin to cramp. Alex has yet to look up from Michael’s face, too afraid of what he might find if he dares to glance toward Kyle, who he can sense is sitting at his right, or Max, who’s more probably looking out at the sunset sky. Purples and pinks dye everything around them, bringing some shadows to Michael. Alex can’t help but smile. “You’re missing out on this beautiful sunset, you know. Soon there’ll be stars showing up, and we’re already on the desert,” they hit another bump, the muffled _sorry_ coming from Maria inside the cabin startling Max and Kyle. “C’mon, Michael, you don’t really want to get inside a pod, now do you? Please, Michael, _please_. I need you. Who’s going to teach me about stars? I’ll be with everyone else, lying in the gutter.”

“-and who’ll be there to look up at the stars with you?” he hears, mumbled and low and stuttered against the palm of his hand where he’s been stroking Michael's cheek. There's a coughing fit, tremblings rattling through Michael's frame as he shivers. 

"Michael!" Max scrambles to his feet and almost trips over himself as the truck comes to a halt and Isobel can be heard screaming inside _stop, stop, stop, Maria, Michael's awake, I can feel him!_. The tires protest under the stretch but the vehicle stops.

"Michael!" Isobel says as she gets out of the cabin and slams the door shut. "Oh, god, never do that again, you almost killed me!" She pushes at Alex, shoving him out of her way as she clings to Michael.

"Are you okay, Alex?" Kyle asks him, suddenly reaching his side and squeezing his shoulder. "That was quite the scene. And Flint..." 

"I thought I'd lost him," Alex mutters as he watches Max and Isobel hug Michael tight. Liz limps to the side of the truck with a little help of Cam while Maria approaches through the other side. 

"But you haven't." 

"No, I haven't." Alex sighs. "Although I’m sure things will remain as they were before."

"You know, Alex, they don’t have to," Maria pipes in from her side of the truck. "In fact, I believe they can change." 

Alex shakes his head. The scene unfolding before them is heartwarming – Max and Isobel holding onto Michael for dear life, hogging the space around him with hushed words and uttered declarations. He knows his time has passed, the moment where they could have worked through their issues slipping away from their fingertips once Michael chose to run to Maria. The fact that their blossoming relationship crashed and burned when she found out about the years of lies didn't change anything between Michael and Alex. They've been trying to be friends, but though Alex wants more – has been ready for more for months – he has to respect Michael's need for space to adjust to a new reality where they all can bend destinies at their will. 

"Alex," he hears, soft and low. Michael is looking up at him from his position sandwiched between his siblings. "Hey."

He smiles as he greets him back, shyly, almost imperceptibly. 

"I, uhm," Michael begins but he cuts himself, watching up to Isobel who finally takes the hint and hushes Max out of the trunk. Kyle squeezes Alex's shoulder once last time and hops off, arm sliding on Cam's shoulders. Maria helps Liz back into the cabin to leave them any resemblance of intimacy. "Alex." 

"I'm glad you're fine," he offers, looking everywhere but at Michael. "You gave us quite a scare." 

"It's always been you and me," Michael blurts out, sitting up and grimacing as he does so. "Even when my father forced me to marry and I escaped and found you and then you were the one to marry me and-" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alex stops him. Michael's rambling and he's afraid Michael has hit his head hard and Max hasn't been able to heal the concussion. "You’re not making any sense." He has to fight the urge to check if there’s any head injuries.

"I, I just," Michael struggles with words, as though he's fighting to grasp the last figment of consciousness left in him. "I don't know, really. I just think-I _am_ sorry. For everything. I'd like to start over, if you want to." 

"Start over?" Alex repeats stupidly. 

"We weren't wrong, you know," Michael states. "When we believed we were strong together, when you told me you loved me, when I told you we were cosmic. I just _know_ we are meant to be." Michael reaches out, panting, obviously exhausted; Alex finds himself pulled back into Michael’s personal space, like he can't help it, like he doesn’t _want_ to. 

"Michael," he whispers, breath caressing skin. "You can't scare me like this ever again." 

"I love you," Michael says as an answer to his plea. Alex relishes the touch, in the feeling, unaware until that very moment that he's been starved for Michael. "Let me love you, Alex." 

He can only nod, unable to form any sound different from a low whimper, as he simply kisses Michael under the stars that are now out in the sky, bathing them with their shimmering light, gifting them with the most precious present. 

Time.

**Author's Note:**

> Hannah gave me a wonderful array of prompts to work with, and I decided to jumble them all more or less in this fic. Be it by becoming the very title of this to being inserted somehow along the plotline, there's at least a hint at all of these prompts I'm listing below:
> 
> **pairings**  
Max/Liz  
Michael/Alex  
Kyle/Jenna
> 
> **tropes**  
Arranged Marriaged  
Class Divide (royal/commoner sorta thing)  
Confessions when they think they're not going to make it
> 
> **quotes**  
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think" ~ Christopher Robin  
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step" ~ Lao Tzu  
"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken" ~ Oscar Wilde  
"Everyone's lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars" ~ Oscar Wilde


End file.
